Thread: Why pirate costume on Halloween

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From a long time pirate costumes are one of the favorite Halloween costumes. The question is that why people are so much interested in pirates. Is there any heroism, is there any romanticism, they just wants to celebrate their fear or is there any real story behind this?

Maybe you should drop this into the "General Halloween" section.

Pirates are cool. Simple as that.

Between Peter Pan and Pirates of the Caribbean, I've always thought it was Disney-influenced.

I often burn local villages and steal my neighbors stuff.

Totally agree with v_gan, pirates are just plain cool. Arrrr.

Good question!

Seems that it is ever ensconced in halloween, like other odd costumes (bums, superheroes, living people...)

I don't know if it's because it would be a reasonably easy costume to make (as in a Halloween costume before most people bought store bought ones), if it's the idea of a bad rebellious character, or the popular tendency to blend pirates with ghosts.

I was a pirate one year and the costume was dead easy to make with clothes and jewelry I had plus an eyepatch. It seems too common now

Simple.

Although pirates have been around since the dawn of civilization, they have been especially associated with the Americas, (the birthplace of the modern Halloween celebration) hunting the Spanish Main for gold, hiding in Carribean ports and terrorizing the residents of North America from New England down to the Gulf of Mexico.

They were (despite their democratic practices on their own ships,) criminals, murderers, kidnappers and terrorists. They were at one time the ultimate American villian, more feared than witches or native american warriors. They could shut down trade completely, turn the tide of a war and blockade entire cities.
They were, for most civilized people, the ultimate bad guy.
The romantic aspect, the high seas adventure part of pirate lore, is far older than Disney. Pirates were like giant squid, ghosts ships, sea serpents and hurricanes - one of the most dreaded encounters you could have on the open ocean, and people loved to read about them, sing songs about them and hear stories of the more ruthless ones.
When M. R. James wrote "Peter Pan and Wendy" and made the antagonist a vicious pirate captain named James Hook, it was because victorian children already had a well-developed love/hate relationship with pirates.

You may as well ask why serial killers are a part of Halloween. In their day, and well afterwards, people were far more afraid of pirates than mass murderers - to most people, they were one and the same, just from different enviroments.

Like the American cowboy, the European knight or the Ninja of Japan, the pirate is an archetype, someone plying a dangerous trade on the edges of civilization, rarely a hero, mostly a villian, a rogue with their own lingo, their own particular fashion and their own perspective. They are a popular fantasy figure that people love to portray... which is what costuming is all about, eh?

To me, it's because of Disney. Think about it. Pirate's of the Carribean is a ride at I think every Disney park, and remember not that long ago you had multiple Pirate's of the Carribean movies. You also had Peter Pan, and Hook movies.

So, I believe Disney has influenced people to be pirates for Halloween. Why are there superhereos, princesses, and french maids. I think the later one is kind of obvious, but superheroes, and princesses are based on stuff people see in life (comic books, Disney, movies).

Excellently put, Spats.

I would also add that privateers (who were considered pirates by the opposing "privateered" countries or were pirates at other times in their lives) were seen as national heroes for the country under which they served. I'm not sure if that led to an image of the "justified criminal" that we seem to have of pirates at times, but you find a sort of "Robin-Hood-alternative" quality to some fictional pirate characters more recently. Such depictions could be considered anti-heroes, which is appealing to some today.

And yes, pirates were a curiously loved/hated character well before Walt put his pen to paper and drew his first cartoon. Pirates have been a popular subject of books (Treasure Island, Frenchman's Creek, etc.) and art during the golden age of illustration (Ex: Howard Pyle and his Brandywine School students).